Music school offers live performances over internet

Minutes before a dress rehearsal for Giacomo Puccini’s “La Rondine,” junior Ted Jamison-Koenig stood at the edge of the stage at the Musical Arts Center. He clapped two blocks together.

Upstairs in the control room, the people recording the sound were almost frantic about correcting millisecond delays between the front and back microphones picking up sound.

Junior Scott Simpson explained that the delays cause phasing, which is sometimes used on purpose in rock music.

It was all a part of setting up to record the opera. This weekend and next these and other students from the Jacob School of Music Recording program will stream “La Rondine” live over the Internet.

Jamison-Koenig is the technical director, or, as he calls it, the switcher, and is in charge of the camera angles and camera lighting. He went back to the control room and as the play started he began switching camera angles and giving orders.
“What’s your f-stop?” he said into his microphone.

Konrad Strauss, chair and director of recording arts, said he wants the video to be competitive with anything on the Net, including the Metropolitan Opera’s live streaming.

“We have a set-up comparable to professional opera companies,” Jamison-Koenig said. “And in some cases it’s better.”

A big difference between the two is the Met charges.

“This site will always be free,” Strauss said.

The live streams started in November 2007. Strauss tested the live streaming video with IU alumni in New York. The opera was “La Boheme.” He was interested in seeing if it could work. It did.

“It really started out as an interest in the technology,” Strauss said.

Its success allowed him to get funding from the Jacobs School of Music and other grants and publicize the streaming videos.

He wants to create more interest in classic music. He said this is a resource that can make compelling classical music available to anyone. He hopes to start broadcasting performances to Indiana’s public schools, he said.

“I’m very interested in technology,” he said. “Specifically technology to broaden the appeal of classical music.”

He said he felt that in 2007, IU and the Bloomington community had enough access to broadband internet connections to handle the high quality video. But, he was surprised by who was most thankful — family and friends of the performers in other cities and states who couldn’t come see the show.

Strauss also wanted to see if the technology could be done for a reasonable cost.
The Met spends upwards of $1 million per production for broadcast. IU Music Live has spent $60,000 to $70,000 total.

Not every performance goes up on the site. Strauss said most performances are with shows whose rights are in the public domain. For instance, April performances of “West Side Story” at IU, which is also running on Broadway, would be too expensive.

The biggest legal challenge, he said, is dealing with granting of rights. If the school rented music for an opera from a publisher, the site has to receive permission from the publisher to broadcast. For instance, in fall 2008 the publisher granted permission to stream “The Love for Three Oranges” live and then have the show on demand on the site for six months.

The site got 5,321 unique visitors from Jan. 2 to Feb. 16, Strauss said. The last show the site broadcasted live, “Lucia di Lammermoor,” attracted 889 viewers, though he said probably only 100 to 120 watched the whole thing.

Other schools are starting to do similar sites, Strauss said.

He gets about one call a month from schools trying to get something similar started. North Texas State University started a streaming project, concentrating on instrumental music.

“You will see a lot more of these types of projects,” Strauss said.